Project Debater - fully automatic debate - computational argumentation - argumentation mining

1. Project Debater
@ IBM Cloud Data Science & AI Meetup
11.12.2019
Noam Slonim, Distinguished Engineer
Project Debater Principal Investigator
IBM Research AI
Jochen Stark, Executive Architect – Data & AI
IBM Germany
NIVA: Add picture of
totem only
Or of Harish (per
Noam’s comment)

2. 1997
First computer to defeat a world
champion in Chess (Deep Blue)
2011
First computer to defeat best human
Jeopardy! players (Watson)
2019
First computer to successfully debate
champion debaters (Project Debater)
IBM Research: History of Grand Challenges

3. Motion: We should
subsidize preschools
Live Debate, San Francisco, Feb 11th 2019
Expert human debater: Mr. Harish Natarajan
Format
Opening - 4 mins (x 2)
Rebuttal - 4 mins (x 2)
Summary - 2 mins (x 2)
Fully automatic debate
No human intervention
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olz3UVUFg2c

4. Embed Video Here

5. Project Debater
How it Works

6. Listening
comprehension
Data-driven speech
writing and delivery
Unique Capabilities
Modeling human
dilemmas

7. • Nearly 40 publications in top NLP
conferences and workshops
• Released many datasets: thousands of
downloads
• Lead and co-organized relevant
workshops and tutorials
• Invited keynotes at multiple venues →
EMNLP 2019
Scientific Contribution – Computational Argumentation
Google-Scholar hits for
“Argument(ation) Mining”, 20.10.19

8. • Our mission is to develop language
technologies to enhance decision-making in
enterprises
• Informed decisions require considering pros
and cons, typically done via Reading /
Consulting
• Key example – Debater Speech by Crowd
Moving forward

9. Debater Speech by Crowd
• Speech-by-Crowd harnesses the wisdom of the masses
for arguments
• Challenges – Pro or con? Redundant or not? Themes?
Argument quality? …
• Live demonstration in front of ~1,500 people in Tel-Aviv,
June 2019
• A new communication channel between the decision
maker and the relevant people
• → extendable and scalable platform of debater-services
to enhance mining/collecting arguments and processing
these arguments into narratives & insights

10. From checkers to chess & Go
in ~70 years: All in the ‘comfort zone’ of AI
• Next move is selected from a small set of
possible moves
• Easy to know who won
• Possible to quantify the score at any state
• Computer can win via tactics humans do not
comprehend
→ A new territory for
AI grand challenges?
Going Beyond Previous AI
Grand Challenges